Review: TweetLine — Not Just Another Holo Themed Twitter Client For Android

With Ice Cream Sandwich, Google effectively killed the argument that Android, as an OS does not look as beautiful as iOS. The big G has also taken steps to ensure and help developers in properly implementing the Holo UI in their apps. Over the last few months, the quality of Android apps has gone up drastically. Some absolutely stunning and beautiful apps have hit the Play Store including Hike, Tasks, and Solid File Explorer among others.

Even then, there is a lack of a beautiful and fully functional Twitter client for Android with a Holo theme. The official Twitter app for Android is nothing but a piece of garbage, and does not follow the Holo theme or feature a black theme. Some new Twitter clients have popped up recently on the Play Store that show quite a potential including Boid, Carbon, Tweet Lanes, and Twidere but they are very much a work in progress. Carbon will probably trump all the other twitter clients with its beautiful UI, but the app has been in development since ages and the developer just keeps pushing the release date back.

Today, we look at another new Twitter app for Android that has a Holo theme and shows quite a lot of potential — TweetLine. The app has a name that sounds very similar to Tweet Lanes but that’s about it.

Even though TweetLine uses the Holo theme, the developer has done a remarkable job of keeping the app’s UI distinct from its competitors. While UI is a subjective, I personally prefer the look of TweetLine over all other Holo themed Twitter apps. The White theme with Black action bar looks absolutely stunning, while the ‘True Dark’ theme will be appreciated by all AMOLED packing Android handset owners.

Even though TweetLine has a Holo theme, it supports all Android devices running Eclair (Android 2.1) or higher, which should please owners of Android handsets running Gingerbread or lower.

While TweetLine is still in alpha, it has all the basic must-have features required in a Twitter client covered, which its competition lacks. Below is the full feature list of TweetLine -:

– Pull-to-refresh to refresh each column (timeline, direct messages, mentions) – Register the last tweet you read in the timeline to always find your tweets as you had left them – Sharing pictures with TwitPic, Yfrog, Lockerz and pic.twitter – The colorbar which allows you to assign a color to a user, a colored bar will appear on his tweets in your timeline – Integration of a url shortener: bit.ly – Preview images in tweets as thumbnails, and can see the image full screen by clicking on it (with zoom support) – Configurable action on the support along a tweet – Android 4.0 themes available : Dark, Light, Light & Dark – Change the text size and color of tweets – Autcompletion on friends name – Display the renewal hour of your API requests – Edition of your profile – Search tweets and users

The app also has plenty of customizations options including the ability to change the color of the font in the tweet, links, the ability to split the action bar into two if your device has a large screen and much more. The Tweet Composer window of the app will automatically show the contents of your clipboard while composing a tweet, which is very handy if you want to copy-paste something. However, I really did not like the Tweet Composer’s UI and hope the developer revamps it in a future update.

Even though TweetLine is in early stages of development, the app has a lot of potential. The lack of notifications might be a bummer for many, but with Twitter locking down developers from providing API access, there is not much the developers can do. The developer of TweetLine, HappyDr0id, is also working on adding other new features such as a Tablet UI, Multi-Account support, Widgets, Notifications and much more.

As a long time Plume user and a Carbon alpha tester, I must say TweetLine has won me over. With a couple of major updates, and a tablet UI, TweetLine might just become the best Twitter client for Android.